


In Memoriam

by Aphelyon



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Memories, POV First Person, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-14 20:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17515454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aphelyon/pseuds/Aphelyon
Summary: Paul lays in bed at the end of the day, watching old recordings of Hugh and reflecting on their life together.





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> **Unauthorized copying of this work, any and all of my works, inclusive of writing and all artwork imagery of my creations, to any and all other sites is not permitted.**

 

 I love this one. 

 It’s one of my favourites. 

 I don’t think I ever did tell you that though. That wasn’t intentional, I suppose it just never came up.

 You sent this one to me after a long day at work, later than you usually did. I wasn’t worried at the time, I’m pretty sure I was at the lab anyway and I had my nose stuck too deep in ...something. I don’t even remember what. So I didn’t notice that it came through late. All I noticed was the notification, that it had arrived, when I got home. After putting away my things, I ate dinner, had a shower then sat on my bed and pressed play. Oddly, for whatever reason, I remember those things. Your messages were always my favourite part of those dusky hued evenings on Deneva - even if you weren’t physically there with me. At the time, it almost felt like you were.  
  
 Like now, laying alone on our bed, watching old recordings I get that same old nostalgic feeling - that it almost feels like you’re with me.

 Almost.  
  
 I wish I could tell you the moment I knew I was in love with you. I can’t even pin-point it, truly, it was countless times in which I just _knew._ No great epiphany, no moment of eureka. Just the unequivocal knowledge settled so deeply into my being that I am in love with everything about you, Hugh. A truth so profound I can’t even remember what it felt like when there was a time that I didn’t love you, that I didn’t know you. I couldn’t then, and I certainly can’t now. It’s still the same truth, it just hurts now.

 In the recording you start telling me about your day. The day you describe is so mundane and typical that you could really be describing _any_ day. It’s not that I mind, or think it’s boring, or ever did. I didn’t, and I don’t. You tell me for the hundredth time about doing a tonsillectomy. It happens so much that it becomes our little joke. ‘ _The most universally useless evolution any humanoid made_ .’ I said to you once, you rolled your eyes and laughed saying how true that was. So it became a thing; I’d ask you about your day, and if it was boring and uneventful you’d flash a wild, sparkling grin. ‘ _Oh you know, just tonsillectomy after tonsillectomy._ ’ If you’d get called away mid-call ‘ _Ah, emergency tonsillectomy probably_ ’ giving me a wink and a kiss before logging the call off.  
  
 We were having lunch with a group of your colleagues one time, having met up on a Starbase when we were both attending a conference at the same time, remember? Some Junior Lieutenant of yours made a light hearted comment about being assigned all the boring cases.

 ‘ _Ah yes, tonsillectomies._ ’ I said to her, keeping my tone as flat and dry as it usually is. But as soon as I caught your eye as you looked straight at me from across the table, with that twinkle in your eye and that grin beginning to form on your lips, I lost it. We roared with uncontrollable laughter while everyone looked on with confused expressions, wondering what was so funny about a _tonsillectomy_ of all things. Confused partly at the missing context, partly at seeing me boisterously laughing so freely when they were so used to my sardonic usual self. They, like so many others, probably didn’t think I was capable of such things. You always brought that out in me, gave me this freedom to be like that. You truly made life such a joy to experience, even the most mundane bits.

 Kasselian opera is playing softly in the background. The first time I watched this one - at this point - I’ve already long realised this, picking up on it as soon as your message started playing. You were so tired you forgot it was even on until you finally realised after explaining your day, as the Diva reached and matched the crescendo of the accompanying orchestra.

 You smiled, and rolled your eyes. “Yes, I know you hate it, but I’m very tired and it relaxes me, so your unappreciative ears will have to put up with it this time.” You rolled your eyes again, and readjusted yourself on the pillow, pausing thoughtfully for a second before saying; “I should send you some, one day.”

 Which you did, a couple weeks later, after I somewhat begrudgingly asked you to. Through a combination of you being so tired and the following weeks being so busy, I think you just forgot. ‘ _Prove me wrong.’_ I said, no, _I challenged you_. I wanted to hear what you were hearing, the beauty that you proclaimed it to stir within you. I just didn’t seem to get it. It never got through to me, it just sounded like a right cacophony. But for you, and only you, I would try.

 All these years later I guess you finally did prove me wrong. Although I’m too late to tell you that now.

 I love this part. You’re so at peace here. You always made me feel so at peace, too. You close your eyes, listening to the music that was playing in the background, and your features go lax, and just for a moment you fall asleep. If it were for a moment longer I would now find it unsettling - with how still you were - if I could see the rise and fall of your chest perhaps that would be different. But before it reaches that point, you smile and although your eyes remain closed for a moment longer, you take a deep breath in and your eyes crack open again - smiling all the while.

 This is how you look when you first wake up in the morning and you don’t have to go to work that day. I learnt that pretty soon after this message, the time you first stayed at my place when you came to visit on your time off. The way you looked as the Denevan light streamed through my windows, and from the plants outside my window it was broken up into hundreds of spots of light, dancing over your skin as the plants swayed in the morning breeze. You liked the window open when you came, your short cropped hair might not have swayed in the breeze, but there were always the smallest stray strands of hair that were caught up in it. It’s those details that made me know that you were really there, in my bed, right next to me instead of some video projection.

 Oh, and the way your eyes flutter open, like they did every morning, those impossibly long dark eyelashes that framed your impossibly deep, rich beautiful dark eyes? I can’t possibly choose one favourite moment in the mornings, but this is one of them.

 The other being the first thing you did, every morning, whether I was awake or not. You would reach out for my hand and hold it between us in the gap of our pillows. I’d stroke my thumb over the back of your hand (you told me I did it in my sleep, completely unconsciously), sometimes you’d kiss my knuckles. If I was asleep, I loved waking up to that.

 Even though in this recording you don’t reach out, and even though my entire field of vision is taken up by this recording - I habitually reach out, from where I lay on our bed, to the gap between our pillows where your hand would be usually waiting. It isn’t, of course. My hand is met with the coldness of the sheets, and remembers it’s alone. I tuck it under your pillow anyway, maybe it will eventually warm up the warmth of my own hand, and the weight of the pillow can trick me into thinking it’s the same thing.

 It’s not, and it won’t.

 I focus on your digital face instead.

 You mumble through a bright, sleepy smile. “I can’t seem to keep my eyes open.”

  _‘Open your eyes.’_ Your last words to me in the network, now echo in my head, triggered by the commonplace words you used. What I would give for you to open your eyes right now, see you take a deep breath, flooding your lungs with life once more. To smile that groggy half asleep but no less brilliant smile. Tangle your hands and legs in mine. Hold you in my arms.  
  
I can’t. So, I watch on as the recording continues to play.

 “- I was thinking, Paul.” your words are slow - you’re so tired - but they are warm and genuine. Something you’re incapable of ever not being. “I have some opportunity for leave coming up. I’d like to see you again -" I’d do anything to see you again. But I can’t see you again. Ever again. Only in old playbacks. “ - and it would be nice to fall asleep with you.” All I can think of is your weight next to me, your presence so whole in our bed. How you radiate warmth.

 I remember that first time you visited me on Deneva, how you flinched away from my ever-frozen-feet with a shrill shriek. I ended up chasing you around my bedroom, to attack you with my equally cold hands. We’d collapse against each other in a tangle on the bed, heaving with laughter at the fact we acted like we were twenty something years younger than we really were. Our sides hurt so much from laughing, but you kissed me anyway through the laughs. An action half way between trying to breathe through laughing and a kiss. Somewhere in the back of my mind, faintly, I registered my leg hurt - I must have bashed it on the edge of the bed - but I was too happy to even care. Wrapped up in your arms as you pulled us closer still, kissing me more fervently - and I you. After all that, not a single part of us was cold.

 Sure enough in the morning you found that a deep bruise had bloomed on my shin. You kissed that too, following through all the way up my leg and once again your mouth rendered me breathless.

 At night, eventually, without a word you would simply gather up my cold limbs and press them against you, tuck them up in your own limbs, and I’d warm up while gathered up in your embrace. I remember that small shiver that raked your body on first contact, every single time. But you’d only curl around my limbs tighter, and I would in turn gather you even closer. I never knew such warmth or such comfort, was ever possible.

 But it was, with you - and only you.

 It _was_.

 “Oh, yeah!” Your tired state suddenly disappearing as you sprang back to life with such an eagerness I thought you were going to burst through the transmission and fall straight into my arms. I wish you would.  “- There’s somewhere I want to take you... A restaurant in the Alpha Canaris system, on Springboard - terrible name I know - but it’s Centauran and amazing, apparently. I think you’ll like it.- ” You flashed a smile, your eyes glittering with eagerness, a look I could never say no to. “ - Think about it, and let me know.”

 So, of course I agreed. I didn’t need to think about it. We ended up finishing that next trip to Deneva with a flight out to Alpha Canaris, and spent a few days there. I’m a man of science, but you make everything and every experience positively magical. It was amazing, and I did like it - just like you promised I would. Even back then you knew me so intimately, better than I knew myself. It’s cliché, I know. But it’s true.

 You’re a dream come true, a dream I never knew I even needed. I was always in awe of life in the universe, but you taught me how to experience that - to interact with it, express it - touch it.  
  
 The restaurant was wonderful, sure. High-class fine dining, a spectacular view, live music with something that resembled a harp and a singer with a spectacular melodic voice to accompany it. I appreciated it, enjoyed it - but know I wouldn’t have done so if I weren’t in the company of the most divine and enchanting being in the entire universe. We ate, talked, laughed and even danced a little.

 As the evening wound up you smiled at me, positively out glowing the brightness of the light from the setting binary suns that streamed through the restaurants tall floor to ceiling windows and we clink our glasses together in a harmonious chime. ‘ _A new chapter, together._ ’ You said, or more accurately you half sung it in a singsong voice. You are no opera singer, that goes without saying, (and not a great at humming either) but you do have such a beautiful voice. Did, had. Now the only way that this new chapter was to be sung was through choked sobs.

 I remember these things. I don’t know if you do too, wherever you are. I don’t even know if you’re even anywhere, anymore. Maybe in freeing the network… I freed you too. Which…

  _Shit_.  
  
 There goes my streak with how many nights I sleep on a dry pillow. Don’t worry, it was a pretty dismal number anyway.

 “I should probably go now -” no, please don’t “- before I fall asleep on you again.” That’s okay, I don’t mind. Don’t go. I reach out, but touch nothing, of course.

 “I’ll see you later, Paul.” I was the one who never liked saying goodbye, that surprised you, so you always said it like this instead. It was a promise, every time, that there would be a next time.

  _‘It's never goodbye…’_ You’re right, Hugh. As always, you are so right. I believe you, I do. It’s not goodbye but that’s because _I never want to say goodbye_ .  
  
 I can only hope that as I sleep tonight the ocular-reality chip won’t be knocked off my temple, so when I wake up in the morning, it’s your face I see instead of the cold, and empty place where you should be.

 Even if it’s just for a moment, even if its not real and even if I truly don’t know if it helps or not… Even so, you’re all I want to see.  
  
I wish I could see you again.  
  
_I wish._  
  
_I wish…_  
_  
_ I’d do anything, Hugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and I hope you ~~cried~~ enjoyed! As always I love your thoughts and feedback, it's tremendously appreciated. 
> 
> Thank you to EmmaKeladry for giving it a first-read to see if it made sense. Lol.
> 
> You can also come find me over at Aphelyons.tumblr.com - I post drawings of Culmets stuff I do there too.


End file.
